


Once more, this time with feeling

by Stryfe



Series: Love for Stryfe [3]
Category: Cable and Deadpool, Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Christmas, Fluff to come, Horror Tropes, Humerous... maybe, I REGRET NOTHING, Kid Fic, M/M, Multi, Some Crack, Stryfe is still insane, Wade's on some crack, he'll get better though, that are overused lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-07 13:44:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8803114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stryfe/pseuds/Stryfe
Summary: Stryfe's insane, Wade's insane. Stryfe's the dictator of the 41st century, Wade's a mercenary. Stryfe thinks he's perfect, Wade knows he needs to be fixed. Same difference, right? At least until 2 former Apocalypse priests decide to enact a last resort to fix Stryfe. Just so happens, Cable has to take care of Stryfe as soon as possible to save the world. Coincidence? I think not!





	

**Author's Note:**

> All characters belong to their respective owners (Marvel, etc.). My stories may not be posted elsewhere or otherwise used or changed without my sole permission.

Stryfe stared down the descending steps, into an underground facility guarded by an orange tinged metal gate with a simple padlock on it. Twilight had begun its quick descent into dusk, nighttime rapidly approaching with a chill in the air growing. Quickly checking around him, his eyes and powers found nothing out of the ordinary but the abnormal silence Stryfe could hear was damning. Well, he would find out the truth one way or another, wouldn’t he? Stepping down the metal stairs, Stryfe’s armor clinked with each step. Lifting one hand, Stryfe ran a finger along the gate and looked closely at the substance now coating his gauntlet: rust and dirt. The padlock itself had an old keyhole in it and Stryfe could feel his eyes narrowing, suspicion building. This was not something that should exist in the 41st century. Grabbing the padlock tight in his hand, Stryfe ripped it off the gate with ease and pushed the door open, listening to it creak the whole way back, the empty darkness ahead teasing him.

Did they think to try to scare Stryfe with a lack of light? Walking into the old and worn facility was like walking into another lab. The hallway walls and ceiling were made of some metallic color with a light colored floor containing numerous stains on them from rust, dirt and dust among… whatever else had happened here prior, if the decaying skeleton he’d just crushed was any suggestion, meant blood being among the disgusting filth beneath Stryfe’s feet. He couldn’t detect another presence nearby, with his mind or other senses, which left him with no option but to continue walking forward through the dark hallway with heavy caution. Upon reaching the middle of the hallway, dim light flickered on, revealing dark silver-gray walls with what would have once been hospital white floors.

At the end of the hallway, two doors stood, side by side. One appeared to be an old lift, likely not in service any longer, and the other door with symbol of ascending steps; stairs no doubt. A sudden presence touched his mind, revealing itself to be behind him when he reached out to touch it and Stryfe jerked around to see a small figure slamming a metal door that had come from within the wall itself. As the door shut, the stranger’s mind disappeared. Stryfe could feel the rage bubbling within him, growing greater as he tried and failed several attempts to force the door open with TK. Keeping an eye on the doors now visible at the end of the hall, Stryfe walked right back to the entrance and ran a hand over the smooth and relatively new wall that effectively blocked his escape. Nothing to grasp and still no response from his powers when he attempted to poke at the door.

Stryfe’s lips pursed tightly together as the realization hit him: He’d allowed himself to walk into a trap. Whoever had decided to mess with Stryfe had been ready. They’d been able to hide themselves well, leaving their mocking and condescending letters right on his bed for an entire week.

_“You’re quite arrogant Stryfe,” Cable remarked casually, as they struggled against the other for the upper hand. “That’s going to be your downfall one day if you don’t fix it. I can help you Stryfe, all you have to do is let me….” Cable pleaded softly, pity evident in his eyes._

**Arrogant**. The nerve Cable had at the time, insulting his better by claiming Stryfe of all people to be arrogant. Perhaps Cable was right about something, if Stryfe’s current situation was anything to judge by. Here he was, locked in a dimly lit and old facility, alone. Stryfe had overthrown Apocalypse and crushed Cable’s forces in the war, yet here he stood powerless. Forced into someone else’s game to play by whatever rules they decided to set. Clenching his teeth, Stryfe turned around to face the doors at the other end of the hallway; no movement came from them, instead they sat there waiting for him to come into their depths.

Whoever had trapped him in this facility better be fully prepared to deal with Stryfe’s displeasure when he found those responsible for this mess. Rule number one: Don’t fuck with Stryfe.

\-------------------------------

“Where the hell are we?” Wade groaned, stale air hitting his face.

I don’t think you want to hear the answer. _Maybe we just ate something bad and we’re hallucinating again!_

“Oh boy, this brings back the good ol’ days.” Wade growled, jerking his restrained arms. Metal cuffs held his wrists and ankles tight, keeping him as flat on his back as his weapons would allow on the metal OR table.

You didn’t put a lot of effort into that. Maybe you should try doing it harder? _That’s what she said!_

“Old joke is old Yellow, stop giggling,” The room was tiny. Reflective thingamabobs on the side of the room with the door, probably windows, showed no light streaming in either. Huh, they could be those fancy one way mirrors Wade had seen at Weapon X too.

_Wait… I don’t get it._

**Get what?**

_What are thingamabobs? They don’t sound edible. They sound more like stupid hydra Bob did something._

**You can’t see it but I’m rolling my eyes at you.**

Jerking harder, ( _That’s what she said again! EL-O-EL!)_ , one cuff broke open. “Three holes to go before we kill the sick fuck making us miss Bea Arthur being crowned most beautiful woman alive,” Wade huffed, forcing the second and third cuff off.

_I like Nate better than Bea! He’s so handsome._

**You mean the guy we just finished disappointing by failing a simple retrieval mission?**

“We haven’t disappointed Nate yet, we still have the flash drive we can plug into his fancy metal socket,” Wade grinned. Everyone always doubted he could be subtle.

_We should accept Nate’s offer and stop taking mercenary jobs! We’d get to sleep in his room all the time then. <3_

**Ugh, you are such a sucker for Mutant Jesus.**

_Am not!_

“Am not!” Wade gave an indignant shriek. “We’re just… better friends than most people?”

 **Ooooh, god Nate! Harder, HARDER! Insert moans, groans and panting noises here.**  White’s voice paused, dripping with sarcasm before he continued.  **OOOOooooOOO! Let me moan when you shove your fingers in my mouth and make me suck them before I drop to my knees and put my naked ass in the air faster than a nymphomaniac forced to live as a celibate nun!**

“I don’t do any of that!” Wade gasped, offended. “He might be mutant Jesus but I don’t bottom… often. Not to mention we only did the nun roleplay scenario ONCE, thank you very much.”

_But Nate’s super big and strong and, and… oh my god, we need to beg him to repeat last Tuesday night only this time he dresses in a fancy business suit and we can wear our slutty maid outfit!_

“I’m not going down this conversation road again,” Wade glared at the text boxes above his head, before relaxing his leg, pulling it up hard and fast to break the last restraint. The lights flickered on then as Wade rolled off the OR table and onto his feet. Oh, apparently they were windows.

**You aren’t going down the Nate road again because you know he owns you? Did you finally look in a mirror to see the collar he has on your neck with the “If lost, return to Cable” tag?**

_We get to be collared?! Please tell me Nate’s bought a whip to go with it! Wait, important question. What color is our collar?_

“I, uh, is it me or is the room a little warm? Oh, look, lights are on! Time to explore. Dora, Dora the explorah,” Wade sang as loudly as possible, walking over to pull the door open.

**Uh-huh. Hear that yellow? Denial and distracting himself.**

_Isn’t D. Nile a river in Egypt?_

“Hey, dumbass one and two! Time to focus,” Wade had walked himself into a hallway that his rude ass boxes were darkening the barely visible-hallway with their fat text boxes. The walls were metal with disgusting white tile that was thankfully stained beyond the original white. This was why you didn’t get white tile for your house kids. It gets super dirty and makes experiment victims disgusted with your failed sense of fashion.

_Rude! You’re fat, how about them apples?!_

**Rude! We’re right here and you’re insulting us in the description. Low blow to yourself there given we’re voices you made up in your head.**

“Ha, we don’t have apples so fuck you! Besides, your text boxes are blocking my view of the scary hallway so shush yourselves and lose some of the extra box space. Seriously, too much Netflix and chill for you guys… Except I’m the one getting laid,” Wade said cheerfully, taking a left only to see a sign attached to the wall.

_“Deadpool, when you wake up and escape the table make sure you go right. Left has too many naughty pictures of Nathan.”_

“Too many naughty… pics of Nate?” Wade’s mouth went dry. “Wait, I didn’t take any and Nate’s refused to let me take pictures of us when…. Son of a whore!” He shrieked, enraged. Nate had let someone take naughty pictures of him when he’d promised Wade would get to be the first one in line if he wanted pictures taken?! All of Wade’s monopoly money was on Domino. How dare Nate accept Neena back!

“Ok boxes, to the left we go! Nate would want us to make sure that these pictures are… uh, destroyed with… extreme prejudice after I inspect them carefully,” Wade nodded, feeling extremely wise. Someone had to inspect just how naughty this evil sign claimed them to be. For the safety of the world and all that good stuff of course.

**You’re in a lab facility, God knows where, and you’re taking some random sign’s word on where to go just because it has Nate’s name on it?**

_Of course we are since Nate knows where we’re at! If you put Nate’s name on something it’s not a lie. It’s like the internet, you can’t lie on the internet. Everyone knows that White, duh._

***sigh***

Promptly ignoring his boxes, Wade decided to hum along to Casual Affair, by Panic! At the Disco for you curious readers, as he took the left and followed the hallway. The hallway was lined with 4 doors, 2 on each side of Wade and 1 at the very end of the hall with a small label Wade couldn’t make out from here. Walking by slowly, Wade tested each room’s door as he passed only to find them all locked with bars in the windows. Peering in each though revealed the same as the first room he’d passed on his right: Operating tables, with restraints like what had held him down earlier, trays with varying types and amount of surgical equipment and skeletons.

Reaching the closet at the end, Wade rubbed some dust off the door knob, ( _Ew, it’s dusty. We could be polishing Nate’s knob if you hadn’t run off in your sleep.)_ WHILE IGNORING YELLOW’S COMMENTARY and tried opening the door which gave way easily. “What behind door number five, could it be… a map?!” Wade announced with one hand acting as a microphone, throwing the door open wide only to see some skeletons fall out of an otherwise empty closet.

“Well, well, well. Looks like our friends here finally decided to come out of the closet, ha! See guys? It took you long enough but it was so easy,” Wade giggled, amused at the skeletons in the lab’s closet.

 **Really,**  White asked in a tone feigned with innocence.  **If it’s so easy then why don’t you leave it too and tell Nate you got it bad for him?**

“I’m not gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that… I like boobs. Me and Nate are just, y’know, releasing some stress..."

**By having sweaty bouts of sex?**

"Ok, you know what? Go fuck yourself White,” Wade growled, slamming the closet shut again. He’d messed up that one bad.

  **Sure I will, Mr. Drowning in denial. Right after you do. By the way, did you know men also have breasts? How coincidental given your love of them.**

_But we don’t have sex by ourselves. Nate keeps us happy, like an amazing boyfriend. <3 … White, do you think Nate’s been holding out on us with his boobies?_

**“** I hate you. Both of you,” Wade snapped trying to Wave away Yellow’s content and delicately sighing box while taking another left into a hallway that looked exactly like the one he’d just left. Huh, probably just coincidence.

\----------------------------

**~Elsewhere in the facility~**

Ripping the door off its hinges from the middle of the hallway proved Stryfe’s TK still worked just fine on the interior of the facility. Whoever had sealed him in here had made a mistake; a mistake that they’d soon regret. Floating down the stairs brought him three levels deeper into the facility’s depths. Blasting the closed door out of his way, Stryfe moved into the new floor’s first room; it was large and had nine tables in a three by three area with black counter tops and technology that was hundreds of years out of date. Stryfe’s lip pulled up in disgust at the ancient and primitive microscopes, centrifuges and Bunsen burners among others too broken to be identified easily.

He’d have to make sure whoever it was that had brought him here died painfully slow. Taunting him until he came to the facility and then trapping him in here with relics far below what Stryfe deserved as one of the leading scientists in his world, all of it unusable. Straight across from Stryfe, a note had been taped to the door leading out of the room, left waiting.

Walking up to the note, Stryfe read it:

_Stryfe,_

_If you’re reading this then I’ve clearly got you trapped. I made a mistake the first time by obeying Apocalypse’s orders. I realized this far too late and for that, I’m sorry. I helped corrupt an innocent child, inflicting a twisted insanity upon you, and too much time has passed to repair the damage done to your mind through most, if not all, methods that I have found. That burden, and all the crimes you’ve committed, are mine to bear and I accept full responsibility for it all._

_That being said, one last idea came to me when I thought you would be completely lost, something that could save your mind and soul. We’ll get to fixing you but for now, let’s play a game Stryfe. I have brought one other person here, roaming the same facility as you. They have the key to exiting this place. You will have less than 12 hours now to find him and figure out what exactly the key is. I did not bring him here to harm you in any way, shape or form. However, you’ll find him difficult to kill should you let your temper get the best of you. If you fail to find out what they key is, then you should expect me to activate the last method I have at my disposal to save you._

_Play nice with Deadpool, Stryfe. He’s your brother’s friend._

_P.S. As you may have noticed with the front door being the prime example, I’ve ensured even your worst temper tantrum with your powers at full won’t get you out of here. Good luck!_

**Cable**. Cable’s “friend” didn’t “know”, hmm? Stryfe’s fingers were twitching violently, one hand coming up to pinch his nose. Stryfe could feel a nasty headache coming on as he tried to force himself to take deep breathes. Cable had to be involved in this pathetic game, pulling on a different guise to mess with Stryfe’s head.

_“Stryfe, I could help you if you let me…” Cable bargained, pity for Stryfe showing in his eyes._

_“He’s driven you crazy Stryfe. I could help you, you know that. You almost accepted once before he showed up. You just have to let me help you,” Cable’s quiet voice echoed, hand held out._

_‘Just let me help you Stryfe,’_ Stryfe’s face twisted with rage at the memories coming up to the surface of his mind and he pulled his hand back, clenching it into a tight fist. ‘ _I can help if you let me…’_  Stryfe’s upper body wound up like a tight spring before releasing to punch the door as hard as possible, sending it flying off its old hinges into the barred glass windows, watching the door fall right back to the floor amidst a flurry of glass raining down with it.

“ _I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU CABLE!”_  Stryfe roared, fury echoing into the empty hallways.

There was no way to keep calm. Cable had dared to  _sneak_  into  **Stryfe’s** castle. He had the  _audacity_  to leave taunting letters to Stryfe. He’d managed to bring Stryfe into his pathetic trap to try to  _“ **fix** ”_ what Cable clearly misconstrued as a broken toy. Two could play at this game of his. Stryfe would find Cable’s “friend” and test their limits. After, Cable would have nowhere left to run.

Floating into the hallway to begin his search while reaching out to try to find this creature’s mind, Stryfe ripped tables up from the room behind him and blocked off the pathway leading left. Floating to the right, Stryfe passed by the windows, giving a passing glance at the reflection they showed back: Stryfe could see his grin in the windows. Oh, how much wider that grin would get when he taught Cable a few lessons before he died at Stryfe’s hands. Ha, what did Cable know? If  _anyone_  was insane then it was  _Cable_  for his nerve to call Stryfe broken, to look down upon the better of the two and assume he held any weakness between them.

\------------------------

“… Forgive me, you were right,” Her soft voice whispered, her eyes stuck to the monitors watching Stryfe’s expression; his own blue eyes reflecting a twisted, violent reverie while a manic expression and murderous grin warped his face. Stryfe was leaving no stone unturned in his search for freedom; Deadpool, meanwhile, was wandering in one giant circle on the same floor always taking a left for some reason, oblivious to Stryfe’s madness. His sister’s shoulders slumped, defeated. “Poor child, twisted and warped into a nightmare that could scare monsters. We spent years just ruling everything else out through theories, brother. We could have been helping him, we could have saved him from madness in the first place…. Instead, we ran like cowards and left the child defenseless.”

“Sister dear, Apocalypse shadowed our every step. We kept him from taking over Stryfe’s mind and that was all we could afford to do. If we could have been sure that something would have helped Stryfe then we would have done so earlier,” He hoped his sister was reassured by the strength he tried to put in his voice. Both of them had had a hand in raising Stryfe according to Apocalypse’s grand design. Committing their fair share of sins in corrupting the innocent child, interfering only when Apocalypse had tried to claim Stryfe’s body as his own. He and his sister had stopped their attempts to fix Stryfe when Stryfe had nearly killed both of them after finding out about their forays into his mind. Which had brought them to this moment, watching from the shadows for so many years, for only one chance to fix Stryfe.

“Brother, are you all right?” His sister questioned, bringing him back to the present.

“As well as I can be, drowning in the blood I’ve spilled,” He stared at his own hand, that no matter how hard he’d scrubbed, would forever be ruined by his failure in this timeline.

“… Do you think we were right to drag Wade into our scheming? He might not be completely innocent but his own forced insanity… we’ll be doing this without his consent, brother.”

It was a risk, taking him from his friends and time period. A morally bankrupt risk that Wade would have probably disagreed with had he known their plans. “Yes, I know,” It was his turn to whisper, his voice and consciousness laced with the added guilt of taking away Wade Wilson’s choice, refusing him even the smallest bit of knowledge, that he’d be helping to save Stryfe. “We will make it right to him as well, sister. We will fix him as we fix Stryfe and hope he forgives us later when we offer him all that we can give," Looking at the timer, he prayed silently to whatever God was out there if any existed at all, hoping they would forgive him for the false hope of escape he’d offered Stryfe. Hoping that Wade would forgive the abuse he’d soon be enduring as time ticked away until the facility would disperse the sleeping gas.  

\------------------------

“Oooooh, jingle bells, Cable smells ( _Like Heaven!),_ Phoenix laid an egg ( **Phoenixes don’t lay eggs, genius** ). The Blackbird lost a wing ( _Not our fault!)_ and Wolverine got laid ( **More than we do at any rate** ), hey!” Wade kept on singing through the interruptions his boxes kept popping up with.

**We’ve made no progress at all, Mr. Circle. Which reminds me, where was the porn the sign promised again?**

_It said take a left! Maybe we took the wrong left, White. What if the sign really meant Cable’s left?_

Looking around, Wade had no idea where he was. Still didn’t mean he was going to admit White’s prickly self was right.

**You just did. I’m not prickly, you just don’t listen to reason.**

Wade DIDN’T admit to anything, so shove off and stop reading the text White!

**No, please, go on. I’m so convinced to be nice. While you’re at it, take another left and another and another. Two lefts equal a left and then a right, clearly not a circle.**

_We are not going in a circle, four lefts make a square. To naughty Nate pictures! The sign we keep seeing always says go left. Signs don’t lie White._

**Except when they do.**

“See how my katanas dance, swinging in time ‘round the ball’s room. Each blade slicing through your skin, gently cutting while the blood flows… Ok, I have no idea how the Waltz of Flowers tune actually goes.”

 _My turn next! Hmmmmmm…. Ok, I got one Nate would like._ Yellow’s box bounced up and down like a kid on a trampoline before music notes started emanating from it. ♫♪  _Becauuuuse, dot, dot, dot, dot! Something white should go on our tongue! Things don’t taste right without Nate’s dominating touch! Our tongue should bathe Nate’s dick tonight, hey!_ _❣ Better suck it right, better suck it tight, or we won_ _’t be getting laaaaiiiid toooniiiiighhhhtttt!!!_ _♪♫_

**… Both of you should be ashamed for ruining the Coffee and Waltz of Flowers songs from the Nutcracker suite like this.**

“Hey, that one didn’t come outta my mouth!” How dare White insult Wade’s maidenly honor like this, lumping his beautiful song in with Yellow’s perverted mind.

_Hey, I’m not perverted! I just know the taste of finer things in life. Like Nathan Summers <3_

“Uh, Yellow, not the epitome of manliness with the girly sigh there,” Wade finally stopped jumping, pointing up towards yellow’s box.

**And you’re any better?**

“I am primary shareholder of this franchise, so yes. By like, a million billion times, I am way manlier than Yellow or you,” Wade replied sticking his nose in the air. “How long has it been ‘cause I’m bored now. Not to mention we got an invite to the X-men Christmas party this year. We can’t miss it the first time we’re invited especially not since Nate begged  **(Asked.)** , BEGGED us to be his date  **(Diversion from talking to his father)**.” White and interruptions tonight, good Nate in heaven, what was his problem?!

**The fact we’ve been walking in a circle for, let’s see, an hour and a half now probably? While I’m at it, you realize Nathan isn’t God right?**

Did voice boxes even have real problems to deal with? Like the fact the maybe the sign had lied to him and Wade wouldn’t get to see naughty pictures of Nate… Or that Wade had absolutely no idea where he was.

After a bit of genuine searching through the dirty halls, which were way nastier than his apartment, Wade stopped at a three way intersection in the hall. Looking off to his right when his trail in the dust kept going forward, showed two doors were side by side. One leading up and the other going down.

**Up means towards the surface in general. Dim lights, windows only for the rooms. Means we could be underground.**

_Up means back towards Nate!_

Well, either way it was two against one now. “Up it is then,” Wade remarked cheerfully, stepping into the door on the left to go all the way up. The jog up two flights of stairs led Wade to a door, rusted shut from age. “Hnnnggg,” Wade grunted, pulling the door’s handle. “Like Aragorn of poke-e-man once said, “One does not simply walk into more doors,”" Rubbing his non-existent beard thoughtfully, like a gigolo would on the clock while wearing a green thong, Wade did the only logical thing he could think of: lick the door handle until it gave way to his saliva’s ability to eat through things by thirty percent!!!! And Nate couldn’t believe Wade’s tongue wasn’t made of butter.

Leaning in, the first hard lick made Wade shudder as a thick layer of dust mingled with grime and dead bugs came off in tow with other unidentifiable things, all attached to his tongue…. Normally Wade would swallow but this just seemed like a bad idea. Worse than the time he’d eaten dog food. Lifting a finger, Wade wiped off what he could before spitting several times with the hope that he hadn’t swallowed a bit of that.

**Considering the other kinds of filthy things you’ve done with your mouth and this is where you call it quits?**

“You shut up, you filthy judging box you,” Wade growled, staring intently at the door.

_We could just jump through the window like a ninja._

“Yellow… that is the most normal thing you’ve said this entire time,”

_What’s that supposed to mean?!_

**That you’re annoying when you’re horny.**

_Gasp! R-u-d-e!_

Leaning back dangerously over the damaged railing, Wade pushed off crashing through the window in a hail of glass shards.

“At least it isn’t safety glass. When that shit breaks, it breaks for keeps and in chunks.” Oh well, time to continue onwards. To LA FIESTA DE NAVIDAD!

Turning to the right, Wade took long steps traversing the hallway and humming jingle bells. ‘Tis the season to be merry even in an old horror trope of a lab, right? Which meant something, something important moral found at the end of the story. “Or found in a cafeteria!” Wade could feel his heart squeezing itself at the decrepit sign pointing ahead of him, to the left. There was a light in the middle of the train tunnel after all!

Taking off running, Wade hoped he might actually be finding the one good thing this dull place had to offer.

\-------------------------------

The sound of something fragile could be heard shattering from the stairwell Stryfe had just left. His irritation immediately gave way to immense pleasure. Either the other knew he was being hunted or Deadpool was just that stupid. Immediately walking back to the staircase, Stryfe walked up one more floor, exiting out into the hall. Looking at the befouled floor revealed a stripe going through the floor, as if someone had dragged their feet through the dirt, revealing the bare floor beneath it. Following the trail, Stryfe kept his eyes open on the rooms around him. The trail didn’t lead into any other room, it had simply kept taking a left in the main hallway. Other rooms on the floor were empty, nothing looking as if it had been touched, much less entered.

After a few more minutes traversing the hallways, Stryfe took yet another left, only to find another hallway with the trail leading all the way to the end, another sign stuck to the wall. Was this where this Deadpool had started?

Closing in on the sign, Stryfe read it twice before looking left into yet another empty hallway. Looking back, Stryfe read it one more time searching for any meaning, if any existed at all:

“ _Deadpool, when you wake up and escape the table make sure you go right. Left has too many naughty pictures of Nathan.”_

Scrawled handwriting. Someone had certainly been in a hurry to write this before moving on. Which meant several new, revised assumptions. _When you wake up and escape the table_. Stryfe crossed his arms over his chest, metal clinking against metal as his fingers tapped rapidly. Wake up would mean he’d been asleep for some reason and escaping the table? Bound or otherwise held down. Looking to the left showed the same trail, with disturbed bones scattered near the door straight ahead while the others looked like they hadn’t been disturbed. Only one open door, behind him, would imply he’d come from there. Turning around, Stryfe took a sharp right into the room Deadpool must have come from. Dust had been disturbed, the table’s restraints broken.

This left more questions than answers about the so called friend. If Cable was behind this, why put his own friend in danger when he wasn’t the kind of person to do so and then tease Deadpool about pictures? Which brought him back to the note left for him near the top floor.  _By obeying Apocalypse’s orders…_  Cable hadn’t worked for Apocalypse.  _Brother’s friend…_  No one had ever dared to call Cable his brother but looking at them side by side, they could be considered twins.  _Even your worst temper tantrum…_  This person had deigned to speak to Stryfe as if he were a child of some sort. Cable hadn’t actually been mentioned in the letter, just “ _brother.”_  However, given that he and Cable shared the same genetic material, no one else could be assumed to be Stryfe’s brother. Someone knew he hated Cable, enough to be distracted by such a small detail as “brother.”

Perhaps Deadpool could offer more answers when Stryfe found him. If he’d been tempted by naughty pictures of Cable then perhaps he was attracted to Cable in some form? …Stryfe could feel his mouth tilting back into a grin again; for once, he could actually feel thankful about his shared appearance with Cable. If nothing else, Stryfe still held the upper hand in a fight. But if Deadpool had somehow been on this floor, with no sign or hair of him now, it would mean the shattering glass had come from above even this floor. Even with time spent here, he couldn’t have run far from the floor Stryfe had just arrived on. Not to mention, given how long he’d spent just walking around to make the trail leading through the dust, the poor man must be confused from whatever had been done to him. Even with time spent here, he couldn't have run far from Stryfe. A grin tilted his lips, as he headed back towards the stairwell. Too bad Cable wasn't here to have fun with his friend. Oh Deadpool...

Come out, come out wherever you are…


End file.
